‘Sick’ Child Porn Video Goes Viral on Facebook; Twitter Reacts

Facebook users are outraged over a child pornography video that has gone viral. According to Gawker, the video received over 32,000 shares and 5,000 likes on the social media site before Facebook finally took it down. Allegedly, the video and subsequent screenshots were up for eight hours on Facebook before it was taken down.

Nothing is more important to Facebook than the safety of the people that use our site, and this material has no place on Facebook. We have zero tolerance for child pornography being uploaded onto Facebook and are extremely aggressive in preventing and removing child exploitive content. We are pleased that this material was reported to us quickly enabling its swift removal.

Users turned to Twitter to express their disgust with the video. Here are some examples:

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Users are horrified over the idea that such a video would be shared instead of just being reported to the Facebook police. It seems like the issue of child pornography has been around for awhile. In 2011, a petition was started on Causes.com asking Facebook to stop all child pornography. The group “Men Against Prostitution And Trafficking,” or MENAPAT, started the cause in an effort to force Facebook to solve this ugly issue, since they felt that Facebook and it’s team were failing to do so. According to the petition’s “About Me” page, Charlotte Carnevale, Facebook’s Safety Team Leader, told the leaders of the petition that, when it comes to child pornography, “there’s plenty of it” on the social media site. The cause has almost a million and a half members.

A similar issue arose when anti-Semitic tweets appeared on Twitter. The Union of Jewish French students sued Twitter to divulge the identity of users who were tweeting anti-Semetic remarks on the social media site (France has laws preventing anti-hate speech). Twitter had 15 days to comply, but didn’t and the UEFJ has sued Twitter for $50 million.

Should the Facebook users who shared the video be charged with distributing child pornography? This Twitter user thinks they should be:

Everyone that shared that Facebook video should be brought up on charges for distributing child porn.